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Santa Lucia Festival impresses with cuisine

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At the Santa Lucia Festival, there’s something for everybody. The kids can hop on any number of carnival rides, check out remarkable dancing and they can eat all sorts of Italian cuisine, some of which you cannot get everyday. 

“The sweet sauce is definitely something you don’t get at a lot of places. It’s got a little bit of heat, but it’s still very sweet and that’s really a Sicilian thing,” says Woody Diederich, who runs the food booth. 

Festival attendees grabbed any number of items such as the pizza, ravioli and the crowd favorite, mostaccioli and meatballs. 

Folks with a sweet tooth were also in luck, as the dessert booth had everything from cannolis to tiramisu to the gelato.

“Last night we had an older Italian man come up and tell that our chocolate gelato was the best he ever had. Everybody is raving about our cookies and our lemon gelato, everybody loves everything,” says Kristen Caniglia, who runs the dessert booth. 

An eating competition even ensued at the riverfront, with our own Craig Nigrelli mc'ing the cannoli eating competition. The adult division was no contest, as Vernon Joseph was the first to down two cannolis for an astonishing ninth year in a row.

“I said I think I can do that, first year we had 10 and obviously they worked down to two. It was so amazing, I brag about it, I’ll put on my Facebook that I’m a nine-time champion now” says Joseph.